Measurement of<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">α</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="italic">s</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math>(<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msubsup><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="italic">M</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="italic">Z</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msubsup></mml:mrow></mml:math>) from hadronic event observables at the<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="italic">Z</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>0</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math>resonance

The strong coupling ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}_{\mathit{s}}$(${\mathit{M}}_{\mathit{Z}}^{2}$) has been measured using hadronic decays of ${\mathit{Z}}^{0}$ bosons collected by the SLD experiment at SLAC. The data were compared with QCD predictions both at fixed order O(${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}_{\mathit{s}}^{2}$) and including resummed analytic formulas based on the next-to-leading logarithm approximation. In this comprehensive analysis we studied event shapes, jet rates, particle correlations, and angular energy flow, and checked the consistency between ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}_{\mathit{s}}$(${\mathit{M}}_{\mathit{Z}}^{2}$) values extracted from these different measures. Combining all results we obtain ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}_{\mathit{s}}$(${\mathit{M}}_{\mathit{Z}}^{2}$)= 0.1200\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.0025 (expt) \ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.0078 (theor), where the dominant uncertainty is from uncalculated higher order contributions.